Cool down, there’s sand in your computer

How about we put some sand in your computer? Cool down! We are not talking about sticky beach sand. A team of researchers have found a type of silicon dust—silicon dioxide nanoparticles to be precise—which when coated with a high dielectric constant polymer can be used to improve cooling of power-hungry electronic devices.

“We have shown for the first time that you can take a packed nanoparticle bed that would typically act as an insulator, and by causing light to couple strongly into the material by engineering a high dielectric constant medium like water or ethylene glycol at the surfaces, you can turn the nanoparticle bed into a conductor,” said Researcher Baratunde Cola from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

However, the silicon dioxide doesn’t do the cooling itself. Instead, the unique surface properties of the coated nano-scale material conduct the heat at potentially higher efficiency than existing heat sink materials. The nano-scale electromagnetic effects created on the surface of the tiny silicon dioxide particles acting together can provide an inexpensive improvement in cooling. The implication of this could be a development of new class of high thermal conductivity materials useful for heat dissipation from power electronics, LEDs and other applications with high heat fluxes.

“Using the collective surface electromagnetic effect of the nanoparticles, the thermal conductivity can increase 20-fold, allowing it to dissipate heat,” Cola noted. Although a lot of work needs to be done in this regard, to make it commercially available. Further testing would be needed to ensure the long-term efficiency and to confirm that there are no impacts on the reliability of the electronic devices cooled with the technique.